THROUGH WILD WATERS.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXI, Issue 19058, 10 July 1924, Page 11

THROUGH WILD WATERS.

DOWN A RAGING RIVER. HARNESSING THE COLORADO. PERILS OF GRAND CANYON. The plan to harness the rushing waters of the Colorado River, where six million horse-power is constantly running to waste, has involved a fresh survey of the river’s course, including the majestic gorges of the Grand Can 1 yon. Very, very thrilling has been the experiences of the surveyors and boatmen engaged in this hazardous undertaking. Previously only a handful of daring navigators had ever been through the canyon, where the great cliff walk tower up for mile or more, and are so . close to the top that they almost shut out the sky. Now ten men have not only steered their way through the seething waters, but have made a careful survey of the canyon and the river for 450 miles. The course of the canyon has been described as “a swirling stretch of the wildest water in the world.” and it took the intrepid surveyors 78 days to go through it. Every day death stared them in the face. The mad waters in some places hurled their boats about like corks on a torrent, and it, was only by a miracle that the slender crafts were not dashed to pieces on the rocks. The surveying of the Colorado River is no new thing. It has been going on slowly ever since the time <>f Abraham Lincoln, but the Grand Canyon was the part which seemed beyond the powers at the disposal of man. To get the surveying boats into the river ready for the journey was not easy. They were taken by rail to Flag staff, Arizona, and then carried with the full equipment of instruments and supplies by motor lorry 140 miles over some of the roughest country in the world. TRAVELLING FACE DOWNWARD. The boats were let down into the river at Lees Ferry. Each boat carried three men, one of whom was a highly skilled boatman, and it was his duty to guide the craft safely through th? churning rapids while the others made observations. All were clad in life-sav-ing jackets of cork, and they looked ' more like aviators equipped for an' Arctic flight than boatmen about to • survey a river. Where possible they i landed to make surveys, and at other j places they took observations while ?n i the boats, as there wore not ever rooky ledges on which to obtain foothold During part of the journey they had to lie face downward in the boats clinging tightly to the life-lines stretched across to prevent themselves from being whirled out into the boil, ing rapids around them. Once a boatman was hurled bodily I from his craft, a high wave having caught his boat and tossed it up like a ball. The man turned a complete somersault. and then disappeared completely beneath the waters. His comrades thought he was lost, but he was an expert swimmer, and ho pursued and caught his boat, righted it, and climbed aboard while, as one of the surveyors said, “it bucked like a wild horse.” i The Colorado, after heavy rain, be comes suddenly flooded, and on one of these occasions the waters rose so rapidly and the torrent became so fur1 ions that those at the top of the canyon cliffs thought all the boatmen had been lost. Aeroplanes went up to ■ search for the missing surveyors, but (they could not be seen anywhere, and 1 it was firmly believed that they had ‘ met their doom in the dark waters. Bu ’ But these wonderful boatmen had conquered the torrent, and only when they returned to civilisation did they learn ’ that, the world had believed them lost in the flood. HURLED HIGH INTO THE AIR. ' At Separation Rapids the waters have a sheer fall of 2 0 feet, but this J cascade must bo passed in boats, for the steep rocky walls made it impossible to land and drag the boats ( round. One of the surveying boats , in passing these dangerous rapids was 5 hurled high in the air and its occupants thrown out. It looked as though they must be drowned or carried away by the rapids. They wore hurled here and there, and for a time quite disappeared i from the sight of their comrades. But the others did not spend idle time sor- • rowing for the apparently inevitable ■ loss of the men in the water. They looked out until they saw them struggling m the torrent, and then strove like Trojans to reach them. After what seemed quite an age, and as the result of almost superhuman efforts and enormous risk to themselves the crew of one of the boats managed 1 to save all the wrecked men, but one had been almost crushed to death against the rocks. It is marvellous to think that this perilous voyage wa.i made, and the great survey completed, by 10 men, and that only one of them was seriously hurt. “Imagine,” says one writer, “th? fury of a Niagara concentrated in a narrow winding channel cut. through solid rock, and you will have a faint idea of the racing, rioting torrent of water on which the explorers rode with the speed of an arrow.”